Billy Graham Center Archives

The documents and images featured here are for
the personal use of students, scholars and the public. Any commercial use
or publication of them is strictly prohibited.

The Archives Bulletin Board

This service is intended for Wheaton College students, faculty and
staff; people who live in convenient driving range to campus; or people who
will be visiting Wheaton's campus. Every month, this Bulletin Board will
highlight a new document or set of documents that are available in the Archives.
Come on over and have a look!

To view items previously featured on the Bulletin Board,
click .

Now Showing: Bulletin Board for October 1999:
"A Twentieth Century Crusade" The Papers of Percy and Ruth Crawford

Letterhead from correspondence in Collection 544, Box 5, Folder 13.

Percy B. Crawford (1902-1960) was an evangelist known to other evangelists as
a man who could preach a complete Gospel sermon in seven minutes. Ruth
Marjorie (Duvall) Crawford was a talented musician accomplished on several
instruments, as well as a composer, arranger and director of music. For about
three decades their ministry was one of the best known and most active among Protestant
Evangelicals and Fundamentalists in the United States. They were pioneers and
innovators in youth ministry, radio, and television. Percy in addition was founder and
president of The King's College.

On October 9, 1949, the Crawford's television program, Youth on the March became
the first evangelistic program (perhaps the first religious program) broadcast coast to
coast in the United States. Fifty years later to the day, October 9, 1999,
the BGC Archives will be opening a new virtual exhibit on the web about the
broadcast, "As this is our first broadcast..." Percy & Ruth Crawford and the Birth of
Televangelism. Click here
to go to the exhibit (starting October 9)

The Archives has films, videos, audio tapes, correspondence, manuscripts and other
materials that tell the story of these evangelism pioneers. To find out more about
them, click here to visit the guide to
Collection 457, the
Papers of Percy and Ruth Crawford.